Poliquin: With Bryce Harper now in the big leagues, we're left to sigh and say: 'Kid, we hardly knew ye'

This is a sight we might never see again in Syracuse -- Bryce Harper, as a member of the Chiefs, warming up at Alliance Bank Stadium with a bunch of minor leaguers. Nicholas Lisi/The Post-Standard

Syracuse, N.Y. -- He may only be 19 years of age. And during his time with the Syracuse Chiefs, he might have been just a .250 hitter with four times as many errors (4) as home runs (1) or triples (1). But Bryce Harper, who can sound as if he’s got the brass of a marching band when he’s merely speaking the truth as he sees it, wavered not at all during a recent conversation at chilly Alliance Bank Stadium.

“This has been a little more challenging,” he said of life in the Triple-A International League, “but I don’t feel overmatched at all. I can be doing a lot better than I am right now. Once I get rolling, you’ll see that. A lot of people will see that.”

Unfortunately, with Harper having been summoned to the big leagues on Friday by the parent Washington Nationals, those hundreds of hardy patrons of our north side ball yard may not be among those people. Not in the flesh, anyway.

Oh, sure. He may be back. The New York Yankees farmed out Mickey Mantle, his own 19-year-old self, in ’51, so who’s to say Bryce Harper won’t once again wear Syracuse togs this season? But if you didn’t make it to ABS this month, if you chose to wait until our arctic climes warmed before taking a peek at this baseball Mozart who stands 6-foot-3 and weighs 225 pounds . . . well, history could show that you chose poorly.

Because the kid is gone. And while the Chiefs’ show will go on, it won’t be nearly as interesting with Harper now suiting up for Washington, which he may do for a while. Or at least until he becomes a free agent somewhere down the road and signs on, according to his near-certain destiny, with the Yankees.

“I’d never seen anybody get a double on a hard ground ball hit straight to the left fielder,” declared Chiefs manager Tony Beasley the other day. “But that’s what Bryce did. That was straight from the throwback days, but that’s how he plays. I won’t call him a phenom. I’ve never used that word. But I will say that he’s a phenomenal player.”

It was, after all, not for nothing that Harper landed on the cover of Sports Illustrated at the age of 16, that he later signed for a position-player record of $9.9 million out of the draft with the Nationals and that last year, when he should have been a senior in high school, he belted 17 homers in his first professional campaign.

And yet . . .

“I’m not impressed with myself at all,” said Harper, an outfielder who hit a double and stroked an 9th-inning sacrifice fly for his new Washington club during his major-league debut on Saturday night before a full Chavez Ravine house of 54,242. “I’ve never been impressed with myself. I’m never satisfied. I’m a perfectionist. I want to be perfect in every single aspect of the game -- outfield, running, hitting . . . whatever comes my way.”

He’s also fairly savvy, and not just because he got through high school in two years (while fancying English and history) with a 3.5 GPA.

For instance, during that frosty sit-down in the Syracuse dugout -- a rarity, as Harper had been roped off from the media as if he was an ancient urn -- Bryce told a newspaper pest that if he hadn’t gone the multi-millionaire ballplayer route, he’d have likely become a journalist. (Editor’s note: Roll eyes here.)

And later, while discussing those athletes he most admired, Harper -- a lad raised in Las Vegas, 2,400 driving miles from our town -- cited Ernie Davis, the sainted Syracuse University paragon who'd died some 30 years before Bryce was born.

“He was one of the most impressive running backs you could ever see,” said Harper, ever earnest and clearly aware of his audience. “Of course, things happened to him. But he came to play every day. And that's what I do.”

Ah ha, a kiss-up. Except, when asked which NFL team had drafted Davis back in 1962, Bryce hesitated not at all.

“The Browns,” he answered. “Right?”

Not bad. Not bad at all. And, remember, it is not Harper’s knowledge and ease of banter that moved him from the Central New York bush on Friday and into that Nationals’ lineup on Saturday in the Los Angeles big time. Nah, it was his talent, obvious and inarguable.

“This is a tough comparison, because the guy I’m about to mention is really, really good,” said Beasley. “But I can see Bryce being Josh Hamilton. I mean, Josh can run, but Bryce is faster. They both have tremendous arm strength, but I would say Harper has more. Hamilton has already gotten to his power potential, and Bryce isn’t there yet. But once he becomes polished, he’ll have that type of power.

“Bryce is a Josh Hamilton kind of guy with the ability to do more than Josh Hamilton. I think that’s pretty good because I don’t believe there’s a major-league baseball team that wouldn’t want to have Josh Hamilton on it.”

That amounts to pretty bold talk for a .250 hitter. But before leaving us on Friday, perhaps never to return -- and if you missed him, that's your bad -- Bryce Harper did advise us that he wouldn’t have been a .250 hitter for long. We’d probably be well advised to believe him.

(Bud Poliquin’s columns, "To The Point" observations and freshly-written on-line commentaries appear virtually every day on syracuse.com. His work can also be regularly found on the pages of The Post-Standard newspaper. Additionally, Poliquin can be heard weekday mornings between 10 a.m.-12 noon on the sports-talk radio show, "Bud & The Manchild," on The Score 1260-AM.)